Visionaries, designers, planners, policymakers, and project managers abound. Strategists are rare.
As a result, regenerative efforts most often fail due to 1) bad strategy, and 2) no strategy.
Let’s start by clarifying strategy’s role in the scheme of things:
- Visions guide actions to the desired outcomes;
- Strategies adaptively guide actions to success;
- Policies enable strategic actions;
- Plans organize actions
- Projects are actions;
- Programs perpetuate actions.
Of those six action elements, the plan—which often takes longest to produce and approve—will likely be obsolete the soonest. Complex systems (e.g. cities, ecosystems) resist rigid, imposed order.
All of these action elements are essential, but one is usually missing: strategy. That’s why so many urban revitalization and landscape-scale environmental restoration programs are unsuccessful.
Read the full article on the Revitalization News website here.

Bad Buildings Summit Held to Discuss Vacant Buildings
WTRF 7 News Sports Weather – Wheeling Steubenville Community leaders throughout Brooke and Hancock Counties all have one thing in common: they want something done about the amount of ...
Read More
Brownfields Assistance Center Accepting Applications for Technical Assistance Grants to Eradicate BAD Buildings
Communities throughout the Mountain State trying to eradicate abandoned, vacant and dilapidated buildings may apply for technical assistance awards through the Northern West Virginia Brownfields Assistance Center at West ...
Read More
EPA Announces 2015 RFP for Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Grants
EPA is announcing the availability of funding to eligible entities who wish to develop an area-wide plan for brownfields assessment, cleanup, and subsequent reuse. This funding is for research, ...
Read More